New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs to improve how it reviews contracts, as the process suffers from delays and some are awarded to less-than-satisfactory contractors, according to an audit by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. 

The MTA, the largest US public transportation system, is supposed to evaluate twice a year the contractors and vendors it works with for $250,000 or more. DiNapoli’s audit found that many evaluations miss deadlines and that two out of the 10 sampled contractors received less-than-satisfactory grades but the MTA still hired them.

Improving the MTA’s evaluation process will help the transit agency hold vendors and contractors accountable for their work, according to the audit. The MTA, which runs New York City’s subways, buses and commuter rail lines, needs to control its spending to help fix an estimated $2.6 billion deficit in 2025 as federal coronavirus aid is expected to dry up by then. 

“MTA is too lax when it comes to checking the past record of the contractors it hires,” DiNapoli said in a statement Wednesday. “We should not be surprised at cost overruns and delays on MTA work when we find vendors with poor performance records — or missing  performance records — continue to get multi-million dollar contracts.”

Hard Time

In some cases, the MTA may have failed to consider evaluation results when approving agreements, according to the audit. One vendor with 14 different MTA contracts -- two of which had less-than-satisfactory reviews -- had a combined 59 evaluations over three years, yet documentation fails to show that officials even examined those reviews when awarding the contracts, according to the audit. 

Sometimes the MTA has a hard time assigning evaluators. A $6 million engineering consultant contract wasn’t reviewed until more than two years after the start date because an evaluator wasn’t found before then, according to the audit. 

The MTA says it has a better evaluation system now that it has one agency overseeing all capital planning, development and project delivery.

“The audit is old news covering portions of the last decade, and since then, the MTA has consolidated its capital program into a single agency that has allowed for improved oversight with a new contract evaluation system,” Michael Cortez, an MTA spokesman, wrote in an email Wednesday.  

DiNapoli’s audit comes as the MTA later this month is set to release a draft of its proposed budget for 2023. Transit officials have said that state and city lawmakers need to allocate additional funding sources as next year’s farebox revenue is projected to come in $2 billion short of the $6.35 billion the MTA collected in 2019.

Transit advocacy groups have also called for more state aid for the MTA. Existing dedicated funds and any new sources should flow directly to the transit agency rather than undergo annual legislative appropriation, Reinvent Albany, which aims to improve transparency and accountability in state and local governments, said in a report Wednesday.